Lunchtime pandemic reading.
Standard disclaimer: this is a roundup of informative pieces I've read that interest me on the severity of the crisis and how to manage it. I am not a qualified medical expert in ANY sense; at best I am reasonably well-read laity. ALWAYS prioritize advice from a qualified healthcare provider who knows your specific medical situation over advice from people on the Internet.
This is also available as an email newsletter at https://lunchtimepandemic.substack.com if you prefer the update in your inbox.
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Denmark's ending of COVID restrictions is having the expected negative impact. "It's become increasingly clear to me that Denmark opening was based on flawed assumptions that only lead to more Danes dying than normal.
The 🇩🇰 solution? Attempt to gaslight the whole world, partly through @SSI_dk misrepresenting the data.
It can't work, and it's embarrassing.
Ex: They've been saying mortality rate has been going down since Week 1, that hasn't been true since they published Week 5 data on Euromomo. That didn't stop them from tweeting it.
Week 5 has excess death, is higher than Week 4, and can still increase.
Ex2: Their mortality report never mentions the time period of excess mortality, only considerable excess. It gives the reader an impression that there was a shorter period of excess death than there was.
Ex3: Telling everyone deaths "of" covid aren't going up. But, in the same report they share, Table 12 has a column of "deaths of" covid. When you plot it, the deaths of covid trend upward.
Either the table is incorrect and shouldn't be in the report, or?
CORRECTION 1st ex: The incomplete yellow can go down. It is an estimate. Here's a mortality graph from Week 5 on the SSI website.
It underscores that its inappropriate to use the incomplete mortality data like they did for Week 1-3 data."
Source:
Commentary: Viruses and all forces of nature completely disregard our wants, desires, or opinions. We may be done with COVID, but COVID is not done with us, and no amount of massaging data will change the objective reality that COVID is a serious, highly transmissible disease.
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Omicron infection only provides antibodies against itself, not other variants. "The waning efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, combined with the continued emergence of variants resistant to vaccine-induced immunity, has reignited debate over the need for booster vaccine doses. To address this, we examined the neutralizing antibody response against the spike protein of five major SARS-CoV-2 variants, D614G, Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351), Delta (B.1.617.2), and Omicron (B.1.1.529), in health care workers (HCWs) vaccinated with SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines. Serum samples were collected pre-vaccination, three weeks post-first vaccination, one month post-second vaccination, and six months post-second vaccination. Minimal neutralizing antibody titers were detected against Omicron pseudovirus at all four time points, including for a majority of patients who had SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infections. Neutralizing antibody titers against all other variant spike protein-bearing pseudoviruses declined dramatically from one to six months after the second mRNA vaccine dose, although SARS-CoV-2 infection boosted vaccine responses. Additionally, mRNA-1273-vaccinated HCWs exhibited about two-fold higher neutralizing antibody titers than BNT162b2-vaccinated HCWs. Together these results demonstrate possible waning of antibody-mediated protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants that is dependent on prior infection status and the mRNA vaccine received. They also show that the Omicron variant spike protein can almost completely escape from neutralizing antibodies elicited in recipients of only two mRNA vaccine doses."
Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abn8057
Commentary: The latest findings show that boosting is essential for full immunity, and that prior infection with other variants doesn't provide strong protection against Omicron.
Also, Moderna's vaccine is more durable against waning effectiveness. If you have a choice for both vaccination and boosters, go Moderna if you can.
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The reverse is also true. "The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant largely escapes neutralizing antibodies elicited by vaccines or infection. However, whether Omicron triggers humoral responses that are cross-reactive to other variants of concern (VOCs) remains largely unknown. We use plasma from 20 unvaccinated and seven vaccinated individuals infected during the Omicron wave in South Africa to test binding, antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis (ADCP) and neutralization against VOCs. In unvaccinated individuals, Fc effector function and binding antibodies target Omicron and other VOCs at comparable levels. However, Omicron-triggered neutralization is not extensively cross-reactive to VOCs, with 20 to 43-fold reductions in titer. In contrast, vaccination followed by breakthrough Omicron infection improved cross-neutralization of VOCs, with titers exceeding 1:2,900. This has important implications for the vulnerability of unvaccinated Omicron-infected individuals to reinfection by circulating and emerging VOCs. Further, while Omicron-based immunogens may be adequate boosters, they are unlikely to be superior to existing vaccines for priming in SARS-CoV-2 naive individuals."
Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.02.10.22270789v1
Commentary: Other variants don't provide robust protection against Omicron, and Omicron antibodies do not provide robust protection against other variants. That means in a place where other variants are still circulating, if you're unvaccinated and you've had Omicron, you're still susceptible to Delta infections. In some ways, Omicron almost behaves like a different disease.
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A reminder of the simple daily habits we should all be taking.
1. Wear the best mask available to you when you'll be around people you don't live with, even after you've been vaccinated. Respirators are back in stock at online retailers, too. Wear an N95/FFP2/KN95 that's NIOSH-approved or better mask if you can obtain it. If you can't get an N95 mask, wear a surgical mask with a cloth mask over it.
2. Verify your mask's NIOSH certification here: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/usernotices/counterfeitResp.html
3. Get vaccinated as soon as you're able to, and fulfill the full vaccine regimen, including boosters. Remember that you are not vaccinated until everyone you live with is vaccinated. If you received an adenovirus vaccine (J&J/AstraZeneca), consider getting an mRNA single shot booster (Pfizer/Moderna) if available. If it's available, choose Moderna as your first choice for both vaccine and booster, Pfizer as your second choice. However, remember than any vaccine is better than no vaccine.
4. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home.
5. Stay out of indoor spaces that aren't your home and away from people you don't live with as much as practical. Minimize your contact with others and avoid indoor places as much as you can; indoor spaces spread the disease through aerosols and distance is less effective at mitigating your risks.
6. Aim to have 3-6 months of living expenses on hand in case the pandemic gives another crazy plot twist to the economy.
7. Replenish your supplies as you use them. Avoid reducing your stores to pre-pandemic levels in case an outbreak causes unexpected supply chain disruptions.
8. Ventilate your home as frequently as weather and circumstances permit, except when you share close airspaces with other residences (like a window less than a meter away from a neighboring window).
9. Masks must fit properly to work. Here's how to properly fit a mask:
10. If you think you may have been exposed to COVID-19, purchase a rapid antigen test. This will detect COVID-19 only when you're contagious, so follow the directions clearly. https://amzn.to/3fLAoor
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Common misinformation debunked!
There is no basis in fact that COVID-19 vaccines can shed or otherwise harm people around you.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid19vaccine-reproductivepro-idUSL1N2MG256
There is no mercury or other heavy metals in the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.
Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/09/1013538/what-are-the-ingredients-of-pfizers-covid-19-vaccine/
There is no basis in fact that COVID-19 vaccines pose additional risks to pregnant women.
Source: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2104983
There is no genomic evidence at all that COVID-19 arrived before 2020 in the United States and therefore no hidden herd immunity:
Source:
There is no evidence SARS-CoV-2 was engineered, nor that it escaped a lab somewhere.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/29/experts-debunk-fringe-theory-linking-chinas-coronavirus-weapons-research/
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/anthony-fauci-no-scientific-evidence-the-coronavirus-was-made-in-a-chinese-lab-cvd/
Source: https://www.smh.com.au/national/are-we-ignoring-the-hard-truths-about-the-most-likely-cause-of-covid-19-20210601-p57x4r.html
There is no evidence a flu shot increases your COVID-19 risk.
Source: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/no-evidence-that-flu-shot-increases-risk-of-covid-19/
Source: https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa626/5842161
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Disclosures and Disclaimers
I declare no competing interests on anything I share related to COVID-19. I am employed by and am a co-owner in TrustInsights.ai, an analytics and management consulting firm. I have no clients and no business interests in anything related to COVID-19, nor do I financially benefit in any way from sharing information about COVID-19.
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A common request I'm asked is who I follow. Here's a public Twitter list of many of the sources I read.
https://twitter.com/i/lists/1260956929205112834
This list is biased by design. It is limited to authors who predominantly post in the English language. It is heavily biased towards individual researchers and away from institutions. It is biased towards those who publish or share research, data, papers, etc. I have made an attempt to follow researchers from different countries, and also to make the list reasonably gender-balanced, because multiple, diverse perspectives on research data are essential.
This is also available as an email newsletter at https://lunchtimepandemic.substack.com if you prefer the update in your inbox.